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Once considered a useless by-product of the oil industry, liquefied natural gas is considered the 'cleanest' fossil fuel, and it is May's job to make the industry even cleaner.

"Natural gas has half the CO2 emissions of coal or oil. And importantly it's available on such a scale it really can meet the energy needs of the many billions of people in the world," says May, a physicist from the University of Western Australia.

May is passionate about helping his home state of Western Australia become the hub of Australia's energy industry.

"The very conservative estimates are we have over 150 years of known conventional gas reserves and unconventional sources such as shale gas, which has been a revolution in the United States."

Not only could liquefied natural gas provide a cleaner source of energy for Australia and Asia, he argues, it could also spur the growth of Australia's petrochemical industry.

"At the moment we liquefy [our natural gas] and send it overseas for energy supply, but also the petrochemical production of plastics and other things like that.

"What I'm hoping to achieve given the vast amounts of gas we have is to help the industry come up with ways of doing clever things with our gas," says May, who has been awarded the 2012 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Sciences for his contribution to Australia's natural gas industry.

Fundamental properties

May studies the fundamental properties of liquids, in particular the pressure and temperature at which gas is converted to a liquid. It is these qualities that enable gas to be efficiently, and safely, extracted and transported over long distances.

His interest in understanding the fundamentals of science and how it can improve people's lives started early in life.

"My father is a professor of chemistry at Murdoch University and I grew up in a family where the fundamentals of science, and how nature works were talked about from a young age."

At uni he studied physics and became interested in applying theoretical physics to oil and gas production in order to develop new sources of energy.

"The world needs new energy sources so we can all have this improved quality of life. And natural gas was on the horizon as the next big thing [in Western Australia] when I was doing my PhD."

As a PhD student, May invented a device that revolutionised the way engineers measure the amount of heavy hydrocarbons — the most valuable part of the gas — left in the gas field reservoir.

"There are conventional old fashioned ways of doing it that have been around since the forties but they are very old and slow and they used mercury and other things … so we used microwave technology to come up with a faster way of doing it." The device is now used worldwide.

After spending three years in the US, May returned to Australia in 2009 where he was awarded an industry-funded professorial chair — the youngest in Australia at the age of 32 — at the University of Western Australia.

Australian industry

Today, May and his team of 12 PhD students and six post-doc fellows, investigate ways to improve the efficiency, safety and environmental impacts of Australia's liquefied gas industry.

Not only are the gas fields located in remote areas, the unprocessed gas contains high levels of CO2 and nitrogen which are removed to make the safer liquefied natural gas.

"Natural gas is a complex and somewhat hazardous mixture. A lot of energy goes into processing that mixture, to remove the nasties, to make it safe and transportable particularly via ship to Asia," he says.

"At the moment they burn something like 10 to 12 per cent of the gas that comes out of the reservoir to make the liquefied natural gas.

"Even a one or two per cent decrease in that number would have a significant impact on the amount of energy that's being used and therefore the amount of carbon emissions that are coming from the plant."

May's team is also looking at ways CO2 could be captured and returned back into the gas field to reduce emissions. It's a risky process — get it wrong and the whole gas field could be contaminated by CO2 — so the team's work will help engineers make more informed decisions.

The future

While they work closely with industry, May is quick to point out that they retain independence over their research.

"It's about assessing things on their merits and I don't think that there's any legitimacy to saying that natural gas isn't a near-term pathway forward."

While renewables will gain an increasing share of the energy supply, May says natural gas will always be an important energy source.

"It's the way in which we can give large numbers of people in the world the higher standard of living that we (Australians) enjoy, while reducing the immediate environmental impact.

"The future is not going to be one type or the other, it's going to be a blend. Particularly with the problems that nuclear power is undergoing right now, natural gas is going to be the fuel in the near term — certainly of this century."

Professor Eric May is the Chevron Chair in Gas Process Engineering at the University of Western Australia (UWA) , deputy director of UWA's Centre for Energy, and co-scientific leader of UWA's participation in the National Geosequestration Laboratory. He spoke to Genelle Weule.